I want to buy you shiny things…

I need to apologize in advance, I found this on the internet and I felt like I needed to repost it. You can find the original source Here.

We’ve all heard it: someone will love you, when you learn how to love yourself.

It’s something that people say when you’re young and you’re looking for someone to love you. It’s something that people say to you when they know that to find love, you need to be open to loving yourself.

But what happens when you love yourself, find someone to love you, and then fall out of love with yourself?

What happens when there is someone in your life that is so amazing and wonderful, someone who looks at you like you are the most cherished thing on the planet, and you find yourself feeling unbearably distant because you just can’t feel their love?

The thing about self-hatred, damaged body image, or low self-esteem is that it’s isolating. It can feel as though you are the last person, on the last glacier, out in the middle of the abyss and nothing is strong enough to breach the distance between you and the people in your life. You hear them saying all the right things, “I love you. You’re my favorite. You’re my one and only.”

The kind of things that people dream about hearing.

And yet, in your brain, the only sounds are:

How can that be? Don’t they know how awful I am? How repulsive? I bet they are onlypretending to love me. I bet they just think that they love me, but someday they will realize that they were mistaken. Don’t get comfortable. Don’t let your guard down.

Before long you find yourself picking fights. You find yourself taking apart every bit of the relationship, aggressively, trying to locate the evidence that will support your lack of self-worth. You find yourself sabotaging something good, because you don’t think that you deserve it.

Unfortunately, in this isolated state, all you can manage to think about its you you you. Your needs. Your feelings. Your love. Your safety. Your security. It doesn’t even cross your mind to imagine the difficulty of what it must be like to love you in that miserable state. You don’t consider how much strength and heart is required to love someone that spends the entirety of their day trying to push you away or test your love.

Being in a relationship with someone who doesn’t love themselves is heartbreaking.

It is overwhelming.

For many years I tested my partners’ love. I ran through them. Or rather, I pushed them until they ran away. In that moment, I felt validated, because I just knew that they would leave me in the end. I just knew that I didn’t deserve to be loved. 

Until I met Her. When I met Her I was challenged with a level of love that I had never experienced. I pushed. I yelled. I cried. I experienced the deepest depths of my self-hatred and I blamed it on her. But she didn’t run away.  I felt disgusting. I begged her to leave me, because I was no good, I ruined everything, I didn’t deserve someone to be there for me, forever.

The thing about love – reciprocal, intimate, lasting, nourishing, fantastic, gorgeous, exciting love – is that it requires that both parties believe that they deserve to be there. It is impossible to participate wholly in a relationship with another person when you are constantly tripping over your feet, getting in your own way, and demanding all of your attention.

The thing about love is, that when you feel it for yourself, when you are able to truly forgive yourself for all of your perceived shortcomings and treat yourself sweetly, you can’t help but want to extend that love to those you come into contact with.

Love breeds love, but it begins with love for yourself.

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Brown paper packages, wrapped up with string.

I was cleaning out one of my bathrooms this afternoon after a long soak.

I wound up taking a hot bath. It’s the same thing as a regular bath, but it had me in it. Regardless of the bath that I took, I was cleaning up after the fact and I stumbled on something.

I found a little test vial of perfume that my wife had acquired somewhere. Being curious, I opened it up and took a sniff.

I was hit with a powerful wave of nostalgia.

When Andrea and I were still dating, I took her out to dinner as a surprise. After I had called her up and told her to get dressed (I insisted she wear a dress this night), I showed up to pick her up. She was in the bathroom primping her hair. She took a small spritz of some perfume that was either hers or her mothers, I’m not sure whose, but she smelled delightful.

Now, we have since moved on to other fragrances and scents and the one she wore that night seemed rather forgettable. It was nice, but nothing poignant.

Well, fast forward 10 years and here I am standing in the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel, holding a little glass vial that smelled just like that amazing night where marriage to my wife became an actual consideration.

I stood there for a moment amidst the steam and musky scent with my eyes closed remembering how I drove in circles through different neighborhoods before making the trek to Keyport all while my beautiful companion sat there looking radiant, smiling big, wearing an old scarf as a blindfold.

Now, I sit here typing this, a whole half a country away and a decade passed from that amazing night.

This is where my post becomes relevant. I provide you with the following:

–          Gentle scratches behind my ears.

–          Pulling socks off of her feet after an exceptionally long day.

–          Kissing a head of thick curly hair as I sit a plate of scary food in front of her.

–          Lying in bed feeling the warmth of a sleeping body mere inches away.

–          Repeated attempts to get my attention for something simple.

–          Being told to get two sodas while I’m up.

–          Cold hands under my arms after standing outside for 20 minutes.

–          Sheepish looks as I open the door to pass off a towel.

–          Quiet content silences with the constant hum of road noise.

–          Scratching through 4 pounds of hair after taking out a scrunchy.

–          Quietly opening doors and bursting out into very loud singing of a song I made up seconds previous.

–          Giving dumb looks while repeating “We can be friends” till one of us gets mad and storms off.

–          Quietly laughing while I watch her dance like a lovable fool to some random J-Pop song.

–          Sitting quietly, mentioning a seemingly random single word, and laughing hysterically for the next 7 minutes

–          The Game.

–          Being asked if she can run the vacuum after I have spent 2 hours cleaning a space.

–          Late night web chats.

–          Having an argument one night, then her waking up to flowers, a clean living room, and 22 new pictures on the wall.

–          Standing together staring at our children trying not to laugh as they attempt to be serious about something trivial.

–          Arguing over where we should eat. (You pick something. How’s Taco Bell? No, pick something else) …. The fu?

–          4 boxes of green AMP and none of them being cold.

–          Cold amp when I get in to the car.

–          Sharing a plate of spinach Artichoke dip.

–          Trips to the Soo.

–          Socks aren’t optional!

–          Sharing a laptop on a couch browsing FailBlog.

These aren’t big things, and some seem so trivial.

But, the point of everything that you have just read is this…

 

These are the things that I miss.

It’s going to be 11:11 soon, I need to go set my alarm so I can make my wish.